NVIDIA GeForce 3D Vision Review

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Experience your favorite PC games in all of their three-dimensional glory.

By Scott Lowe

Every year when January rolls around, the tech industry shows off a year's worth of product at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Of the thousands of products and manufacturers on display, several key product trends tend to emerge, and this year was no exception. While there were big strides being made in just about every product field, no concept was more widely and extensively explored this year than 3D. Each of the world's largest flat-panel television manufacturers showed off one manifestation of 3D technology or another. Despite the fact that we were thoroughly impressed by each company's efforts, none were able to give us any sort of insight into when the concept would be available to the consumer. Indeed, it was seemingly clear that 3D would have to wait until dates unknown…that was, of course, until we visited NVIDIA's booth and gazed upon their 3D Vision system for PC.

Granted, 3D Vision isn't capable of turning any television or Blu-ray content into 3D imagery via built-in stereoscopic converters like Sony or LG's prototype 3D LCD televisions, but it does give gamers the ability to play hundreds of titles from AAA developers in 3D (Complete list of supported titles). What exactly is 3D Vision? What does it do? How much does it cost? And how does it perform? Find out in our full review.

What it is, and What You Need NVIDIA's 3D Vision uses a dedicated graphics driver, infrared transmitter, and 3D shutter glasses to create smooth, three-dimensional images. In order to use the 3D Vision system, you have to have a compatible display (DLP TVs or LCD displays with a 120Hz refresh rate) and a NVIDIA GeForce desktop graphics card (GTX 200 series, GeForce 9 series, or GeForce 8 series).

The system comes in two retail varieties: the GeForce 3D Vision Kit, and the GeForce 3DVision Bundle. The 3D Vision Kit includes all of the necessary software, 3D glasses, and infrared transmitter and costs $199, while the 3D Vision Bundle includes everything from the Vision Kit but with a Samsung SyncMaster 2233RZ LCD monitor for those who don't have a compatible display and retails for $598. Clearly the 3D Vision system is not a cheap venture into 3D gaming, but it is the most inexpensive solution currently available. From the perspective of anyone but a PC gamer, spending $199 or more on a 3D gaming system is a bit exorbitant, but for a PC geek, $200 or more is just another price to day for complete and total gaming satisfaction.

Now that we've established what it takes to get a 3D Vision system (display, NVIDIA GPU, 3D kit, cash, PC geek interest), lets take a look at the technical specs your rig has to adhere to, to sufficiently get it up and running. The requirements are as follows:

System Requirements:

Microsoft® Windows® Vista 32-bit or 64-bit

Intel® Core™2 Duo or AMD Athlon™ X2 CPU or higher

1GB of system memory. (2GB is recommended)

100 MB free disk space

Before we move onto installation and performance, please note the specs on our custom built Uberclok reference system, viewable here. If your system does not match or exceed ours, we cannot guarantee that your experience will be comparable to ours. Also, the GPU listed on the linked page was swapped for the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280 for this review.

Installation Installing the 3D Vision system is hardly complicated, simply uninstall the NVIDIA graphics driver you are already using, install the 3D Vision-enabled driver provided on the included disc, charge the 3D glasses via USB, and plug in the USB infrared transmitter. After you've successfully completed all of that, all that is left is calibrating the your system during the software installation, which consists of telling the driver what, of several graphical tests, appears to be protruding most when wearing the glasses. Once the calibration is complete, it's off to the races.

Simply fire up any one of the hundreds of supported titles, slide on your 3D shades, and start experiencing life in the third dimension.

Performance When you start up a game, a small semi-transparent info box pops up in the right corner of your screen, this displays whether or not the game you are playing is supported, how its rated on NVIDIA's 3D performance scale, and any adjustments recommended for enhanced 3D performance. What type of adjustments does it ask you to make, you ask? Well, essentially in order to create the most realistic, clean, and smoothest 3D image, the 3D Vision popup screen will ask you to change various graphical settings in the in-game menus. For example, when we fired up Call of Duty 4 for PC, the 3D Vision info box instructed us to turn off depth of field effects, as the 3D Vision already effectively does this (it's 3D, duh).

For our performance tests, we used four different titles rated as "Good" or "Excellent" on NVIDIA's 3D quality scale:

Left 4 Dead (Rated: Excellent)

Call of Duty 4 (Rated: Excellent)

Crysis: Warhead (Rated: Good)

Bioshock (Rated: Good)

Because the supported games are essentially patched by the 3D driver, as opposed to designed specifically for 3D, the 3D Vision system creates more of a inward depth of field rather than outward reaching effects, ala the type you see at Disney and Universal Studios. You may be disappointed to read that, but really, the depth effects are more practical than outward 3D. After all, it'd be awfully hard to concentrate during prolonged gaming sessions when things are constantly popping out at you. Instead, in most cases the 3D vision's inward depth effects enhanced our in-game performance, on reason being the separation created between a game's HUD and in-game action. In all of each of the four games we played, the HUD was the foremost element on the screen, making it easier to focus on it with our peripheral vision. In other words, the information on the HUD – remaining ammo, life bar, map, etc. – appears as the closest thing to your face, while the in-game elements appear deeper, almost like looking out of a window. Rather than blending with other elements of the screen, the HUD was clearly differentiated, making it easier to quickly glance at it without losing focus on the in-game action.

In terms of graphical performance, the 3D Vision did cause some serious framerate issues, especially with Crysis: Warhead and Call of Duty 4. While absolutely stunning in terms of visualization, our rig did have a hard time keeping up with both titles' advanced graphics. Because the 3D Vision essentially doubles the images presented on the screen to create the stereoscopic effect, it doubled the strain during sequences of high-action in both titles. With a good 10-15 enemy characters and a handful of friendlies on the screen in COD4, each engaging in combat, our system couldn't process all of the explosions and effects without dropping from the 60 frames-per-second. Although the framerate dropped at points, the quality of the 3D effects was not compromised – we didn't notice any graphical degradation or depth failure, the graphics simply got slower.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, Left 4 Dead was practically flawless using the 3D Vision system. Despite having hordes of zombies throwing themselves at you for a chance to NOM on your flesh, the framerate was consistent, event at reference settings. We found that in addition to having the HUD at the forefront, blood splatter would cover the screen as if it were actually on your face, lovely! Due to the almost arcade-like nature of Left 4 Dead, it's hardly a "scary" game, but when you pop on the 3D Vision, it's like flicking on the adrenaline switch, creating a refreshing new way to play the game. Words can hardly describe the joy we got from decapitating and de-limbing zombies with shotgun blasts in glorious 3D. Tasty!

Overall Although it is a bit pricey and cumbersome with certain titles, the NVIDIA 3D Vision is a step in the right direction. The 3D Vision breathes a breath of fresh air into games we thought couldn't get any more fun. If you don't have a compatible NVIDIA graphics card and/or a 120Hz monitor, the cost of getting your system 3D Vision ready might be hard to justify, but if you've already got the necessary hardware, we highly recommend checking it out.